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User blog:MagmaHound/The Maxing Game
If you've been in the Boom Beach Wiki Task Force for a little while, you might know that I run two accounts; one of them is the main account, Guy Fawkes, which is naturally a HQ rusher account, and is currently, as of the time of writing, nearly maxed. The other is my mini account, Captain Magma. Unlike Guy, I decided to make this account a HQ maxer account, even though I have personally stood against maxing HQs in the past. But that blog was posted a few months before I created Captain Magma. Captain Magma was created in mid-July 2015. As of the time of writing, I have completed maxing out HQ17 on Captain Magma, on the night of November 2nd, 2016, shortly after the Mega Crab left. The second picture was taken on the 1st of August, 2016, a little over three months before the time of writing. It can be seen that I took just a little over three months to complete the maxing of HQ17 from HQ16. Unlike others I've seen that have also attempted to max their HQ, I have an entirely different layout. I don't run any Ice statues at all; I have never run any Prototype Defenses! I'll explain my play style below. Statue Layout As you can see from the pictures above, the statue lineup has remained largely unchanged from HQ16 to HQ17, with the only changes being statue improvements (of course a new statue will be added in HQ18). As a level 6 Sculptor only allows 8 Statues, I use the following: Troop Health +28% Troop Damage +31% Troop Damage +12% Gunboat Energy +34% Gunboat Energy +17% Gunboat Energy +17% Resource Reward +49% Power Stone Chance +73% Zero Life Statues, and zero Ice Statues. The first six of these statues are for offense, which is my main playstyle which has stuck ever since. Unlike most other HQ maxers, instead of turtling with Ice Statues and Prototype Defenses, I attack for loot, just like a typical player would. Resource Reward allows me to accumulate loot much quicker; if I boost it I will get nearly double the loot as I would have earned if I had no RR (I also have intentions of making my 9th statue a RR +20% from the storage for HQ18). Power Stone Chance is probably the only of the eight statues whose use isn't fully justified, but it can indirectly allow me to obtain more Power Powder which I use to boost Resource Reward, and other offense statues if needed. Notes about Defense I have no mind about my defenses. I know that I will be absolutely destroyed as a HQ17 defense, even maxed, with no Prototypes or Ice, will crumble under the force of a high-level attack. Heck, I know that even my own T-med army has the capability to destroy my base without any significant losses. I have not deployed a single Prototype Defense ever since the opportunity arose in HQ15. As such, I have accumulated many Prototype Modules over the months. As of the time of writing, I have exactly 400 Prototype Modules between all 4 types, and I will be accumulating more. That being said, if I ever end up changing my playstyle, I will have a lot of modules to keep my base defended by Prototypes for a long while. I have a DBD 23% in the storage, which I can save if I need to turtle in the future. Another Ice Statue will join it in storage once the 9th statue is deployed. But it took me just three months to max out HQ17 from HQ16, and I think I'm still going strong. The Ice Statues and Prototypes will simply be there as a last resort. Upgrade Order As a mainly offensive-oriented player, I usually do the upgrades for offense first. Through every HQ I passed through, I had a controlled upgrade order, which goes as follows: Step 0: New buildings: I almost always construct new buildings when I unlock them. I'll have to max them eventually anyways, so there's no point in not building them. Although one might argue that not building these buildings right away will allow your attackers less GBE, keep in mind that I do not mind about the state of my defense. Step 1: Pure offensive-oriented upgrades: These are the upgrades that will benefit my offense when I finish them. I usually do Armory, Sculptor, Gunboat and Landing Crafts in that order, with Armory taking priority over Sculptor as it opens up troop upgrades and allows me to start maxing out troops, weaponry and mines quicker. Landing Crafts may take priority over the Gunboat if the upgrade is major (e.g. to level 16 or level 20), but if it's a minor upgrade then I usually leave it for last, and might even do a Step 2 upgrade over it. I can also upgrade the new buildings over some of these upgrades to prevent my VP from rising too quickly (see VP control). Step 2: Other major upgrades: These are upgrades that might as well get out of the way before I continue the maxing process. This includes the Vault, Radar, Statue Storage and Weapon Lab (and possibly the Submarine). The Vault has a high priority among these things and can be upgraded over Step 1 upgrades, especially in the lower HQs where loot protection is weaker. Radar is irrelevant to offense and simply allows for more explorable regions (which I usually don't uncover until I finish my Armory upgrades). Step 3: Defenses: These are upgrades that buff the defense, which I barely care about, but due to my playstyle of raiding rather than turtling, I do these over other economy buildings. Like most players, I would do the higher tier defenses first: Shock Launchers, Boom Cannons and Rocket Launchers (the latter two being interchangeable). After that it's a free-for-all and I do whatever defense I like, but usually go for Flamethrowers and Mortars next. New defenses built when the HQ was newly upgraded may take priority if the more expensive upgrades result in excess VP gain by raiding. Step 4: Economy Buildings: I normally do these last, but with one exception; any storages I need to upgrade in order to afford upgrades in Step 1 and Step 2 will be done ASAP in order to finish those upgrades as well. Since Weapon Lab and Sculptor are more expensive than your typical defense, it suffices to say that these storage upgrades are usually not required specially for upgrading defenses. But when all upgrades in Steps 0-3 are done and only economy upgrades are left, then I do the collectors first followed by storages. Once that is done, the HQ should be maxed out (save for Armory upgrades, but that's really your preference and they'll probably be completely finished concurrently with the rest of the upgrades). Army Used As of HQ17, I use Tmed as my main attacking force in order to raid for resources. With 7 Landing Crafts, I use 5 boats of Tanks and 2 boats of Medics. If the circumstances call for it (example lots of splash damage yet a short path to the HQ), I could change one of the Tank boats for Medics, though this is very rare. Training a boat from scratch takes a lot of time. Usage of Tmed for raiding is one of the main reasons I deploy 3 GBE statues, the 3 Magma statues are just safety nets which benefit the army, really. As level 11 Tanks don't unload as much DPS as a whole set of level 17 Tanks, the extra TD guardian really helps out. With 43% TD, one of my Tanks will deal more damage than a level 15 Tank without extra damage from Magmas. Boost the Masterpiece (31%) and it does more damage than an unboosted level 17 Tank. 28% TH makes the level 11 Tank rival that of an unboosted level 14 Tank; when boosted, it almost beats out the unboosted level 17 Tank. In effect, even though my tanks are 6 levels lower than max level, the use of Magma statues make it rival unboosted Tanks a few levels higher. At level 6, Medics heal 25 HP per second. Multiply that by 4 for each boat and 2 for the number of boats I bring and that total comes to 200 HPS for my overall army. Nothing special, the Medics are still as fragile as ever with under 1,000 health even with 28% TH. However, 200 HPS is a sizable amount that gives moderate resilience against Sniper Towers, and to lesser extents, Cannons and even the Shock Blaster. As a HQ maxer, it is obvious that the troops and weapons I use will be maxed for my HQ level ASAP. The weaponry I prioritize includes Shock Bombs, Artillery, Barrage, and to lesser extents the Flare and Critters, when I get them. The order of maxing troops really depends on personal preference. Primarily Tmed to start with in my case, followed by Hooka and Warriors in either order. Then it's down to the rest. Resource Bases Resource Bases play a moderate role in maxing out my HQ. Most turtlers will attempt to keep as many as possible under control, and while I do keep some Resource Bases, I don't make them a major priority. If I can take a Resource Base with my Tmed, I will do so. However, if it expends too many troops, I usually ignore the Resource Base and leave it out of my control, or simply leave it for last if I wanted to train an operation attack later. I think the most I had at once was 28. Maybe I'll push for 35 to get the achievement, but that will be far into the future. Overall, while Resource Bases do help me out in my quest, the same could be said to any other player. I mean who wouldn't appreciate loot rolling in to your island every now and then? VP Control My control over my Victory Points is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects I have to control in order to keep this account going strong. Go too high, and my Tmed wouldn't stand a chance at the HQ20s and HQ21s that appear up there; not with their 5 fancy Boom Cannons, 2 Shock Launchers, and a Prototype Defense or two as well as a set of Ice Masterpieces because turtle (unless their layout is horrible or they are legit beaching their HQ). So generally, I keep my VP at a moderately low level; high enough to get good rewards out of my VP boats (I stay above 380 purely for 3 Shards), yet low enough to avoid being matched with HQ21s and the sort. Sure HQ20s will be unavoidable at this VP level, but I can always change opponents, and deal with some of them as well. Generally I find my HQ17 Tmed to be capable of dealing with anyone up to and including HQ19 as a guarantee, due to the fact that there are only 3 Boom Cannons and 1 Shock Launcher which make attacking easier, and minimizes casualties so that the next raid can be carried out immediately. While there will be some crazy boosted players with Mark II Grapplers and whatnot, those are not always the norm, and are actually quite rare at the VP level of 380-390. Personally I'm comfortable with keeping my VP in the range of 380-400, give or take a few VP. Sometimes, I use the most common VP dropping technique known as beaching the HQ if necessary. If I have little loot to be stolen and my VP is high, I switch my layout to beach my HQ. Sometimes the amount of loot I have may be high enough to convince me otherwise, but I could take a prediction for what upgrades I'm saving up for; if I can survive long enough (get raided at most 2 or 3 times, perhaps) to keep the loot required for the upgrade, I normally go ahead and beach. Otherwise, I might not do so and keep my HQ inside (but why doing so when defense is futile doesn't really come to me). As a general note, I usually keep my HQ beached when my VP exceeds 390, and inside when my VP is below 385. Between these two values I could leave my base in either state. It's quite strict, to be honest, but sometimes I bend the rules. As my offense grows in power as my HQ level increases, I find these limits increasing slowly. Who knows where exactly I'll be VP-wise past HQ17. Final Notes With everything I wanted to say now out of the way, I'll just leave the section below as a "hall of fame" of sorts. It will commemorate the date of which I have completely maxed each HQ level past 16, and the time taken to max out each HQ level from 17 and on. Note that I did not max out hero abilities but I did max out the hero levels. Doing the former will just take too long (for HQ19, that's including three Brick abilities to level 5 and all three Everspark abilities to level 4, which requires 528 tokens total). Category:Blog posts